this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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IIRC somewhere they also explained it in plain English what the sorting methods do. My layman brain thinks that's a kind of algorithm.
Kindly correct this layman if I'm misunderstanding :)
I'm also a layman, but I have read some discussions about this exact comparison. Essentially, the big mainstream sites often have personalized algorithms for each user that learns and adapts specifically to the user to feed the user whatever junk food content it can to keep them engaged. Algorithms on things like base lemmy or maybe reddit in the past just have a sort function like excel that propped up posts with more likes or more comments. You can see what other people are interested in, but it's not targeting YOU. The predatory targeting algorithm can put a person into a self fulfilling echo chamber that in some ways resembles psychosis. This could naturally evolve into actual psychosis for individuals. I think the old verbage of "touch grass" was the prescription for fighting the effects. I think it's a lot harder to "touch grass" when people are increasingly online and have fewer and fewer avenues to get out of their own echo chamber while staying online almost exclusively. I'm not an expert and the people I got this info from have no credentials I can source, but the logic seems sound to me. Anyone else with better credentials should weigh in if I'm wrong.
The Internet went from globalizing us to partitioning us pretty suddenly, and I think we are seeing the effects now.